Fanfair: Bill Maher's Passion Project

Larry Charles and Bill Maher during production on Religulous. Photograph by Alexandra Lambrinidis.
Bill Maher has frequently criticized organized religion as a source of social ills. Now, in the documentary Religulous, the arch-provocateur travels to the capitals of the world’s faiths, and points beyond, to elicit the views of the extreme and blinkered. He drops by the Wailing Wall, Vatican City, the Dome of the Rock. He interviews, among others, a Satanist, a Jesus impersonator, a Mormon’s many wives, a Raelian bishop, and gay Muslim activists: “You guys have balls!” he tells them. In debunking people’s dogmas, or letting them do it themselves through what comes out of their mouths, Maher has a lot of fun (Larry Charles, his director, previously guided Sacha Baron Cohen through Borat). But Religulous’s irreverence isn’t gratuitous or snide. It goes hand in hand with Maher’s desire to question systems of belief that, to him, breed bigotry, ignorance, and elitism. As he says, “Why is somebody suffering on a landfill and then there’s Rod Stewart?” The controversy will begin with the film’s poster, which shows Maher’s mug emerging from a grilled-cheese sandwich, his personal Shroud of Turin. Is nothing sacred?